New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 7 
racy in America to see the ease with which a few men, hating to 
work for their own living and determined to live on the Govern- 
ment, succeeded in putting a law through our Legislature to set 
them up, with $22,000 a year income, in the fraudulent business of 
conducting agricultural experiments to improve New York farm- 
ing. From top to bottom, the bill, the Station, and its operations 
have been a fraud on our farmers and taxpayers. The contrivers 
of the Station had no more care of our farmers than the Washing- 
ton claim agents had for the heroes who died in battle to save the 
Union when they put through Congress their pauper pension bill 
for the benefit of themselves and the relatives of deserters and non- 
combatants.” The editorial ends with this: “In the name of New 
York’s insulted farmers and in the name of good government, we 
demand of the Legislature to abolish the Geneva Agricultural Ex- 
periment Station. It is a humbug.” So much for the Sun whose 
dyspeptic utterances were expressive of a sentiment then somewhat 
prevalent, but whose editor evidently donned the mantle of a false 
prophet. 
CHANGES OF 25 YEARS. 
What a change a quarter of a century has wrought! ‘The agri- 
cultural scientist now feels that his right to live and labor is recog- 
nized. Members of the staffs of our college and two stations very 
nearly man the programs of our larger agricultural conventions ; 
they are listened to with respect and confidence from the farmers’ 
institute platform; there is evidence that the bulletins they write 
are sometimes carefully read; and their advice is freely sought. 
concerning troublesome farm problems. 
A COMPARISON. 
I wish that in a word I could, by way of comparison, throw 
before you in perspective the agriculture of fifty or even twenty- 
five years ago and the agriculture of to-day. Within a half century 
farm practice, in many of its features, has passed from under the 
sway of tradition and superstition into the domain of exact knowl- 
edge. We now know in part why soils are infertile; we are able 
to trace the income and outgo of fertility and so conserve the 
National fundamental resources; the processes of nutrition are now 
not altogether a mystery and more or less rational systems of feed- 
ing man and beast are possible ; commercial standards are established 
in dairying and have displaced the unbusinesslike and unfair meas- 
urements of former days; milk sanitation is an accomplished fact 
